


Je vais, je vais et je viens

by AceQueenKing



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Jealousy, Lingerie, Miscommunication, Pre-Canon, Teasing, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 12:16:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16933110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Persephone tries to put on a show for her husband on the last day before Spring, to lure him out of his office and into their bedroom.Hades, being Hades, gets the wrong idea about it.





	Je vais, je vais et je viens

It’s almost Spring.   
  
He feels it, as he always does. Hades feels springtime as it slowly seeps into the Underworld: feels the tendrils of vines as they lay roots down into his domain, feels the light smiles that touch Persephone’s face as she twirls them around her fingers. Feels the soft murmuring of long-dead souls as they touch asphodel blossoms slowly coming into bloom and dream, slowly, of lives once-led and could-have-led. Feels even Cerberus relax; feels the trickle of workers slow to an interminable crawl.  
  
The warm seasons move all too slowly in the afterlife, which makes his torment so much worse.   
  
He feels his heart drop deep into his stomach, feels the loneliness of summer slam into him, as it happens every year in these last few days before his wife runs back to mother nature. Feels Persephone start to distance herself from him – even more than she has lately, when she runs to her bar that she pretends he doesn’t know about (but, of course, he does, he knows  _everything_  in the upside down) in between the heady silences and frustrations that come from late March nights.   
  
He sits in his office, eyes closed, thinking of her. He already feels the familiar ache of her ghost; she’s more absent than she is here. She’s in their bedroom right now, spending her last night packing away the things she’s taken back to summer-time: boxes to house refills of her moonlight, bottles to fill with wine for the dead workers who seek simple pleasures. She brings a lot down to the underworld but she doesn’t take much up, and he isn’t ever going to ask why because he’s still damn afraid of finding out the answer.  
  
Not that he will ever admit that, no, but he’s aware of it, as he is of all his many,  _many_  failings. He closes his eyes and watches her with his mind’s eye instead; his shadow materializes, sees her put the boxes in her travel bag, the empty jars carefully stacked on top. Sees her reach for her closet and slowly, haltingly, pick out a bauble from him to bring upstairs out of the many that he’s given her over the years. She fingers a golden bracelet, then hesitates, chooses another; the ruby pomegranate pin, split open with pink quartz arils glittering inside. She looks into the mirror, eyes sparkling – with tears of joy or sadness, he does not know. She runs soft, pink fingertips under it and holds it in her fingers. She winks at herself through the mirror but he sees storm clouds brewing in those beautiful eyes.   
  
He’s always loved her eyes, a warm agate brown that reminds him of dirt and dust and yet there’s something so sharp in them; a liquid spark of life, bursting through the grave. She smiles and tosses his gift onto their bed, and then she’s slowly undressing. He doesn’t force his shadow-self to look away – he is her husband, after all, and he’s painfully aware of how many nights he’s going to be sleeping alone in the nights ahead. Instead, he watches her carefully fold up the black dress over one of their chairs – she won’t wear his colors above, and again, he doesn’t ask because he sure as hell doesn’t want to know the answer as to why. She leans back to the edge of her closet and hesitantly pulls out the green dress her mother favors. He expects her to put it on, but after a moment, she drops it into her suitcase instead.   
  
_Well_. He won’t complain about the view if she’s decided to parade around their room in her underwear. She’s wearing one of his favorites today, by fortunate chance; black lace with a soft vine motif that curls over her stockings. He loves her in vines, in the life that so effortlessly bursts under her fingers. He’s all too aware he should be looking at the contract for the foundry in his lap, but he watches her instead as she puts the loathsome suitcase down onto the ground. She bends nicely, backside pleasantly curved as she slowly lowers the suitcase to the ground. She wiggles a bit in a way that makes him think of more carnal things than actuary tables. He is very, very aware of what he will be missing out on after a few hours. In his office, he moves his shadow closer to her. He could touch her like this, but he doesn’t; he isn’t sure of the reception, and he isn’t going to have the last thing he sees of her for six months be her yelling at him. She stretches lithely and he utters a short gasp in response, so admiring of how she shines bright enough to hurt his eyes, even when seen in this limited way. She gets up quickly, frowning, and he wonders if she has heard his voyeuristic shadow, if she will yell at him for seeing what was not intended to be seen.   
  
But she simply smiles.   
  
Then she sits down on their bed, at the edge of it. Her hand goes to her hair and frees that curly brown mane that he loves, freeing it and letting it flow over her shoulders. She tosses it wildly and his fingers itch to get caught in those curls; to wind those long brown stands between his fingers. Like her soul, her hair is more wiry than smooth, and he loves the perfect coarseness of it all the more.   
  
She lays back in an elegant flop, an almost-childlike behavior from a woman who is rounding her two-hundredth century. She doesn’t pull off the bra, the panties, or even the stockings; she just lays there, copper hands exploring her skin. She holds the pomegranate pin in her fingertips and runs it down her skin in an odd sort of ritual he doesn’t quite recognize but…definitively finds alluring.   
  
Watching this feels profane, like forbidden knowledge. He should not be watching her like this; not like this.   
  
But she doesn’t seem to mind.   
  
She looks up, and smiles again. She places his pomegranate pin onto her bedside table with care, eyes turned toward his shadow-self, towards the door. Nothing happens in the silence for a loud minute, then she sighs.   
  
After a long moment, she turns to her side, curled over onto his pillow, breathes deep. One finger slips between her panties and he watches, hard and miserable, as she slowly pleasures herself; one finger circles her clit and she moans in a way that is all but a siren song to his ears.  
  
Except – except that what he feels is not, entirely, lust. A part of him he cannot shake is sad at this; sad that she takes her pleasure without him, sad that she doesn’t even attempt to wait. Have things gotten so bad between them that she will not even take his pleasure? He is a cold man but he is not without his passions, and she is  _all_  he has ever felt passionate about. He frowns.   
  
But still, he watches.   
  
It feels wrong to watch her, but he cannot tear his eyes away. He watches with a twisting stomach and painfully hard cock as she gasps, wanton; he does not touch himself. He cannot quite see what she is doing, but knows from the movement of her fingers that she is seeking her pleasure fast, moaning and kicking and moving with such frantic energy that he longs to aid her in her release. Years of spying on her above ground during the summertime has let him know exactly how she prefers to work when she is pleasuring herself.  
  
But she has never done that here before.   
  
An odd jealousy lights itself in his chest; he is the King of the final kingdom, and yet, as in so many places, he is unwelcome in his own bed. He should go back to work. He should, he should.  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
She stops after a moment and he frowns; it isn’t like her to not follow through once she’s started something, and he knows she definitively hasn’t come. She’s breathing deeply into his pillow, huffing at it for a long moment before flopping back to her own side, spectacularly frustrated by her own denial.   
  
She turns toward his shadow, and he should go, should open his eyes and pretend not to have seen, but he doesn’t. He’s transfixed by her angry face as she looks at where his shadow is. She stares down at his shadow with narrowed eyes, a fury he’s rarely seen on that bright face coloring it with a sanguine tint.   
  
“Come up here already, Hades,” she murmurs, her words quiet and soft enough to set his soul aflame with mixed emotions. He freezes in his chair for a moment, thinking. He has 20 different judgments he should be taking under advisement, along with the contract he has in his lap, and he should tell her he is reading instead, but he doesn’t.   
  
He simply sits, running through the options of what she means by that in his mind. Is she upset he saw? Did she want him to see? Will it weaken his authority to the people to run to her, as he wants to?   
  
After a moment, her face scrunches into something small and sad, and she lets out a huff of air that might as well be poison. She murmurs something under her breath his shadow can’t catch; it could be  _please_ , it could be  _damn you_. They are both, he thinks, applicable to how she feels about him.  
  
He makes his mind up quickly then, decides to get to the end of this madness in their bedroom. He opens his eyes and abandons his duty, storming upwards. It’s a short trip upstairs, to their bedroom; he ignores the way the walls curl with new vine growth through the castle, all the Queen’s influence. He knows they will wither soon enough. By the time he’s made it to their door, he’s close to freezing again, still not quite knowing what to say.  
  
But he knows she knows she is there, and he knows he will have precious few more chances to see her for the rest of the year, so he opens the door.  
  
She is up like a spark of lightning; he barely has time to shut the door to before she pounces upon him, shoving him roughly into the door behind him.   
  
“Took you long enough,” she murmurs; he stares deep into her eyes and cups his hand around her chin. She is a live wire, her power trembling at his fingertips, but he says nothing. This is the other thing she has always been too damnably good at: knocking him out of breath, off-kilter. She is the exception to every rule he has ever made. His thumb lightly brushes her lower lip, and he shivers at the feel of her soft breath on him, even if his face is made of stone.   
  
“I was working,” he says, neutrally, and she scoffs, separating from him and retreating back toward the bed.   
  
“Working.” Her voice is all knives now, her arms wrapped around herself and he doubts it is because she is cold. “You’re  _always_  working. I’m leaving tomorrow – can’t you spend one last night with me without worrying about your – your  _contracts_?”   
  
He clenches his arm into a fist and looks away; doesn’t she understand? It’s  _agony_  for him to watch her pack, anguish for him to watch her prepare to leave him in this sad joke of a custody arrangement he’s endured since the dawn of time. He hates this night nearly as much as he hates all the ones that follow until summer’s end. It’s better for them both if he stays in his office, stewing in his own agony instead of infecting her joy at being able to visit upstairs.   
  
She already has so many reasons to resent him. He does not want to give her more.   
  
“I’m here now,” he says, pivoting, because he can’t imagine telling her the truth would help in this situation. He takes three steps across the room and swallows her up in his arms, and thinks about how small she is and how large her absence will loom. She leans back into him with a comforting heat—still there, for now—and he presses a kiss to her neck, desiring her beyond anything else in the universe.   
  
“Were you watching?” She asks, and he hums an affirmative as his hands move lightly down her body, fingers slowly trailing down to the still-warm silk panties she has so recently abandoned. She leans back to allow him better access to her neck, one of her hands grasping his hip and holding it tight. “Did you like the show?”  
  
“It drove me mad,” he whispers. Her ass grinds against his cock in a way that’s incredibly painful, and a part of him wants to shove her down and have her on the bed like this; to literally fuck any daydream lovers out her mind. But then she is looking up at him with love in her eyes and the jealousy flees him.  
  
“Good,” she says; she turns slightly to her side, her hands grabbing at his belt. “I was trying to get you up here.” Only now does the idea that her show may have been intended for an audience strike him; he pauses for a moment, contemplating that, but then she wiggles against him and the vast majority of his thoughts leave him.   
  
“Hm. It worked.” He distracts her with a long kiss, pulling her mouth toward his in sweet submission; she whimpers, but her hand still pushes against him, still trying to undo his belt. He stills her hand, grabbing it and squeezing it. He doesn’t want that, not quite yet.   
  
“ _Eventually_.” She wiggles away from him for a second, but not fast enough, because he has her held tight now. He lets her have a taste of him then, gently rocking his pelvis against her damnably still clothed ass. He debates making her clothes simply disappear, but he likes this look, so he just lets her whimper.   
  
“Hades…” She murmurs, and oh if he could record that, he would play it in his ear for all time. “ _Hades…_ ”   
  
“Mm?” He loosens his grip, lets one hand continue its exploration of her body; he strokes her stomach, her thighs, her arms, everywhere but where she wants most, and she just pants softly against his ears. “You got me here, lover. What do you want?” He whispers.   
  
“ _You_ ,” she grinds out before leaning back as far as she can to kiss him, and he obliges, kissing her hungrily as his hand slips inside her panties and resumes the work she started. She’s wet already, and more than ready for him; she rocks against his hand and he enjoys the power he has over her as he circles her clit in slow, lazy circles.   
  
She mewls soft, sweet noises for him as he rocks against her pelvis, the friction almost painful, but death is a patient god and there’s little he likes better than to watch her wiggle against his hand, soft puffs of need echoing through her. “Hades, more, I need  _you_ —“She tries to grab onto his thigh but almost misses, overcome by his ministrations, and he chuckles into her thick, wiry hair. “Please!”   
  
Her begging breaks whatever resolve he had left; he pulls her panties and bra off with little more than a flick of his fingers and grants his cock blessed relief in a few seconds. “You got me, lover,” he whispers, and she gasps as he parts those warm copper thighs.  
  
“Hades,” she whimpers, and he nods, though she can’t possibly see it, and glides inside of her. She whimpers against him, still, after all this time, moved by this union; he should wait but it’s hard to, knowing they’re on a ticking clock, but he lets her get used to the experience of being filled deeply and instead lets his hands roam across her body.   
  
“You drive me  _mad_ ,” he whispers against her neck. She rocks back on his hips and he moves, feels the slickness of her, and groans at how deep he is, how much she surrounds him and how little time he has left to enjoy it.  
  
They establish a rhythm, though it takes a moment; the position is new for them both, and neither of them is so sure on their feet when he’s this deep inside of her. But he has no intentions of going for anything less than he can; his hands move to her breasts, enjoying the shake after every thrust. Persephone tries to lean back to try to touch him but can barely reach, and that’s fine for him; he’d rather put all his focus on her.   
  
She cries out as his hand circles her clit, faster now, his rhythm consumed by hers; she needily rocks back toward him and he loses himself in pushing towards her until she stops him, stilling. “No, Hades, stop, this isn’t—"  
  
He pulls back, confusion no doubt evident on his face. He looks down for a moment, unfocused; takes a deep breath before he says something he’d regret. The words slip out anyway as he gasps for air. “I thought you wanted—"  
  
She grins at him, making his eyes widen further; misunderstanding. How can she run so hot and then so cold? She is seasonal in more than one way and he has never understood it and he never will. She moves back to the bed, lays down. “Here, husband. I want to see you.”   
  
Oh. Relief floods through him, and, as always, he finds himself kneeling at her feet on their bed without much hesitation. “Not much to look at,” he hums, which she shushes with a snap of her fingers, vanishing his doubts along with his clothes.  
  
“ _I_  decide what I want to look at,” she murmurs with heady meaning, and then he’s upon her and they’re both beyond words for hours that pass all too fast. Unseen to him: her arm shoots up from their marriage bed as he settles into the cradle of her neck. Persephone puts scores and scores of flowering vines over their heads as death knows peace for the last time in months, curled peacefully in the embrace of life itself.   
  
\---  
  
He wakes up to petals falling onto his face, his marriage bed as cold as it will be for months. He groans.  _She could have waited_ , he thinks, even knowing she has no choice; the thought comes uncharitably all the same and he crunches the flower in his fingers, and then feels his stomach twist in regret.  
  
He stares up at flowers and vines wilting in the ceiling; a gift, already decaying without Persephone’s presence to sustain it. It only reminds him of how long he has to wait.  
  
He drums his hands against the empty side of the pillow, debating if the fates will notice if he grabs her just a bit earlier. It’s a risk, but he wonders, staring at her empty side of the bed, if it’s worth it. Perhaps a day or two will go unnoticed; after all, has she not always brought him to the brink of madness?  
  
He knows he should go back to his city, his people; he is a King, and he has responsibilities.  
  
But instead, he dips his head down to her abandoned pillow and greedily huffs her already-fading scent.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Serge Gainsborough's _Je t’aime… moi non plus_ and translates to I go, I come and I go. 
> 
> Written for the 100 Prompts community on DW: https://100prompts.dreamwidth.org/ for prompt #003: Tease.


End file.
